*(For those who don't know, the sky in Santa Fe & Los Alamos -- due to the extreme altitude -- is a very deep shade of blue, brighter and darker than the typical light-blue you see at normal altitudes.)

I was referring to the imminent practicality of those ideas. There is indeed Blue Sky in New Mexico but in that conference it was mostly obsucred by cloudy pipe dreams. I do wonder if they handed out bongs at the reception.

Blue Sky refers to any endeavor where the future gain is all based on hope. In my business, the car business, you often see used car lots that say "we finance". What they are doing in acutality is selling you a car for $3,995 or some similar number for which they paid $995. They then require a $995 down payment. So they are whole from day 1. Any payments that you make to the seller are profit on that car. The profit is all "Blue Sky". They hope that you will make perhaps half or slightly more of the paymen

What they are doing in acutality is selling you a car for $3,995 or some similar number for which they paid $995.

I must insist that, in this case, the term used by such upstanding, trustworthy, honest an generous businessmen, such as used car salesmen, fails to describe properly the situation at hand. If the ideas discussed in that conference were to be applied to your situation, the "car" would cost $1.5 billion and all that would actually end up being delivered would be an "artist's rendering" in 3D and

And in further news, Star Trek claims prior art and all intellectual property rights to any hyperdrive. A spokesman for Paramount says, "Even though we call it Warp Drive, its all the same thing. We had our spaceship launched back in 1967 and now want royalties on discovery. You saw it on TV, so you know it must be true."

NASA has no comment, but are reportedly checking into the technology of Lost in Space to determine the validity of Star Trek's claims.

I'm afraid Roddenberry and Company were a bit late themselves. The term "hyperdrive" was used in Forbidden Planet [imdb.com] in 1956. And according to this article [towson.edu], the idea of FTL through "hyperspace" goes back to a John W. Campbell story from 1934.

I would say that I would be very surprised if any propulsion of the sort noted here will be put into production in my life time. But I also have no doubt that we will at some point, discover a way to permit us to distant stars.

We wont find this breakthrough if we dont look for it. As long as the false and impossible ideas are shot down, whats the harm in listening to these wild ideas?

Afterall, some day, someone my actually be on to something. It would be a shame to disregard the idea just because it sounds impossible on the face of it.

As long as the false and impossible ideas are shot down, whats the harm in listening to these wild ideas?

Careful with that. Sometimes even the false and impossible ideas are what work. Consider that nearly all of society at one time knew that the universe rotated around Earth. In fact, to preach otherwise was a death sentence.

After that came mezmorize (hypnosis), which all solid psychologists said could not happen, but 100 years later accepted it as occuring.

Now adays, we have cold Fusion. When Pons/Stanley? first announced it, Physicists stated that it could not happen (as well as unable to duplicate it). The 2 were basically ruined professionally. Now, a number of groups are doing it, including the navy, and it is being thought of as not being impossible.

The point is, just because something is considered impossible, does not make it so.

>Sometimes even the false and impossible ideas are what work.
Consider
that >nearly all of society at one time knew that the universe
rotated
around Earth. In >fact, to preach otherwise was a death sentence.

There is a big difference between condemning free thought
through religious mania and debunking a hare-brained idea that a
college freshman can easily prove to be false (the pursuit of
which wastes tax dollars that can be used to feed hungry people).

There is a big difference between condemning free thought through religious mania and debunking a hare-brained idea that a college freshman can easily prove to be false (the pursuit of which wastes tax dollars that can be used to feed hungry people).

FTL is not bunk because gawd/allah/odin/yahweh/ram said so. FTL is bunk because it ameaningless state in a classical timelike metric. I won't burn you at the stake for trying to work on FTL. However, I will write a sternly worded letter to the NSF recommending that they don't give you any money for it.

The problem is: with this thinking you kill off many breakthroughs.Remember that theories are just models. Now if by any chance one model is false, and a guy thinks he can prove it AND fix it, he won't get any support because the established model doesn't predict his claims. To prove his claims, he might need some pretty expensive equipment, with the NSF has, for example. But, if YOU prevent this from being tested, you may be killing off one breakthrough. You NEVER know if something works or not in advance for sure. Thats why scientists perform experiments. Of course there are many crackpots, but if science remains in its established, comfortable theories, then nothing will advance.

Well yes, I know that such homemade paradigm shifts are extremely unlikely. But I don't like the tendency towards exaggerated conservative thinking. People are effectively banned because of doing research in "unserious" fields. I don't even mean stuff like perpetuum mobiles - take electrogravity as an example. Anyone theorizing with electricity/gravity connections and usage of this connection is viewed as a crackpot and "ruined his reputation". Mind you, this is JUST for toying with such theories, not even remotely considering attempts at getting money for experiment.

This is something I really dont like; scientists with ruined reputation equal banned heretics. Of course there are tons of crackpots, but IMO no one should be punished for theorizing in "unserious" areas (even the definition of "unserious" and "serious" is dangerous IMO). One should be banned when the great free-energy device X will be ready in two years and you can preorder it now, or because the entire work was a hoax (like that Hwang guy did), not because one said that "it might be possible that ABC is possible, I'm quite skeptical though, I'm looking into this". Of course, once somebody can successfully demonstrate working electrogravity that can be replicated in at least one independent lab, reputation is back. But what if by banning everyone in this field no one has the chance of reaching this stage?

(Technology => Science) != (Science => Technology)What the parent means is that US Navy researchers believe they are replicating the Pons/Stanley claims of fusion at roughly room temperature, which is "cold" fusion. Were this the case, then we might even term "cold fusion" a science, once we have a model that explains why it happens (which we don't). Part of the problem is that the amount of byproducts that should result from fusion under current models aren't being found.

Well, as of this week, the state of tabletop fusion is... not hopeful [economist.com]. The guy who claimed to have achieved fusion via acoustic cavitation (that bubble thing) is, if not faking his results, behaving rather suspiciously around colleagues attempting to reproduce the experiment, and allegedly screwing with their equipment.

Its not FTL but baby will it get the ball rolling. I'll just run this by everyone here... With all the talk lately about a space elevator, I got to thinking after a sort of recent slashdot discussion [slashdot.org], just what advantages would a space elevator offer over a tower launch? I contacted the man responsible for a similar idea, the skyramp [skyramp.org] (warning: hideous javascript menu may break firefox), Carlton Meyer, and had a dialogue in which he pointed me to a tower launch archive [yarchive.net].

The ideas I see bandied about there are similar to what I had in mind, which would be essentially an 11km tall tower (think pylons rather than skyscrapers, based at sea), with evacuated airless launch tubes, using nuclear reactors to power a maglev or pulley system to accelerate vessels to escape velocity. These would then emerge above the end of the troposphere [gatech.edu], with it's associated weather and air pressure, and have little to no fuel needed to escape the earth's gravity, meaning you could do a lot more while you were up there. At 1m/s acceleration, you would be at escape velocity when you exit the top of the tower.

Not only would this enable multiple launches daily, it is, unlike the space elevator, readily achievable with today's technology, and financially viable as well. Given NASA had an annual budget of $16.2 billion for 2005 [space.com], and a nuclear power plant costs a cool billion to build, give or take, we could have this up and running in a few years. And once we are up there...

Space has got vast, essentially unlimited resources. One recent story pointed out the trillion dollar iron asteroid up there. The thing has about 5 tons of steel for every man, woman and child on earth. And thats just one of god knows how many... billions more?

Once we leap the cost to escape hurdle (as I think I have managed), we can proceed to use these resources. There are several obstacles in the way of this, first of which is zero gee mining, we have no idea how to do it. We can either mine the ore out there, or bring the asteroid back into orbit and slice it up there. Or slice it up and send it back to orbit. I would be opposed to moving it back into orbit for processing, purely for the debris issue. Perhaps a lunar base would have some merit there.

So we set up a mining and processing operation either on the moon or in deep orbit, and start cutting and processing one of those bad boys. Whats the first thing we build? A bigger processing and mining operation. Space exploration, much like the internet, has to be a largely incestuous affair at first, existing solely for its own benefit.

Once we have that mastered, we can move to algae pods in orbit for food production, oxygen refining, and fuel production (biodiesel or chemical engines), all of which can be powered by the immense energy of the sun, and use the raw materials abundantly available in space. Whether you ship that stuff back to earth or use it for further colonisation, its a vital step.

The production of automated scouts is also a high priority; a vast amount of surveyor and prospector drones to sweep and map every square inch of every rock and gas in the system, out to the Oort cloud, and figure out what they are made of. I'd err on the side of quantity rather than quality, still no reason not to have either. This could be combined with deep space observatories that would make hubble look like the end of a coke bottle.

So now we have a manufacturing bridgehead, a good idea of what's interesting out there, and a cheap means to launch to orbit. Actual manned system ships would come next, to either colonise or investigate the system. The rest, as they say, is (future) history.

I haven't read your links yet, but I'm skeptical about this being "readily achievable with today's technology." To put an 11 km pylon in perspective, Tapei 101 is 508 meters (0.508 km, if you need the math done) tall. Burj Dubai will be 705 meters tall. The Mars oil platform is 990 meters tall, but 900 meters of that is underwater and mostly consists of cables running under tension to the sea floor, and it's definitely not evacuated. A similar design would have to be parked in the Marianas Trench (11 kilometers ~ 36000 feet) or have stick above the water a significant distance, and also have to maintain straightness in any currents or else deal with lateral accelerations on the launch vehicle due to curvature of the launch tube.

Evacuation is also a challenge. If you want to park it in an ocean trench, you'll need to deal with the pressure at the bottom (approximately 15000 psi at the bottom...there's a reason Trieste is the only manned vessel ever to go there). Even if you find a way to build an 11 km tall tower standing above the water, you've got to pump air out faster than it flows in the open top, or add the mass of a cover to the top... which means stuff moving at the end of an 11 km long moment arm.

I also went ahead and did some quick math. 1 m/s/s acceleration over 11 km is not enough:

So then I tried 1 G and got 1040 mph, which still doesn't cut it. Next I went for 5 G's, which is on the order of what astronauts experience during a launch, and that gave me 2,326 mph. It's still not escape velocity, but surprisingly enough, it is sufficient kinetic energy to loft an object to a height of 22,000 miles, or the altitude of a geosynchronous orbit. Unfortunately, when it gets there it doesn't have sufficient tangetial velocity to stay there, so it follows a funny elliptical path 22,000 miles to the hard ground. I ran out of scratch paper before I could quantify that, however. I did have one line left to note that a 1000 kg payload accellerating at 5 G's requires 2.4 MW of power, not accounting for losses, which is one capability we do easily have.

It's a pity, because all of these ideas show some measure of original thought and are theoretically feasible in some fashion, but the technical challenges are rather mind-numbing. So far the only problems I see with the space elevator are a sufficiently strong ribbon, a reliable method for weaving the ribbon in place, absolute reliability of a car during the 22,000 mile trip, and power to the car. Naturally, none of these are very trivial.

Here's another way to view the math - if you start at standstill (i.e. v(0)=0) and expect to be moving at 11km/s at the exit of the tube, your average velocity is Vaverage = (v(exit) - v(0))/2 = 5.5km/s. Using this number you can calculate the time to traverse the launch tube: t = distance/Vaverage = 11km / 5.5 km/s = 2 seconds. You can also calculate the acceleration: a = v(exit)/t = 11km/s / 2 = 5.5km/s^2. So relative to 1 g = 9.8m/s^2, your launch system will require occupants and payload to sustain a

Jesus! It's been over 1900 years since any educated person actually believed any of that crap. Can we let it go? Please? We have many more beliefs to ridicule that people still believed, such as that some omnipotent being created all life on Earth and that man was created as we appear today, without any evolution.

Step 1: use an elevator in a tall building and travel to the top floor.

Step 2: obtain access to ther roof.

Step 3: Make sure not to be in possesion of any material objects on your person, nor to be in contact with any during the experiment (you do not want to call in question the data in your triumphant paper on the subject to be published afterwards). Also remove all clothing (necessary to prevent cheating and for an extra perceptual effect to th

Charging customers to send them into space is a lofty goal for any business owner, and perhaps particularly in an area whose economy draws much of its strength from the availability of cheap land.

But that's the goal that Bill Sprague has set, and he even said that he chose Temecula largely because of its low cost of living relative to the coastal cities where his aerospace suppliers are based.

Sprague is building a 52-foot rocket. By October 2007, he hopes, passengers with $250,000 to spend will be able to ride it to the edge of outer space, where the curve of the Earth is visible and where the planet's gravity is slightly weaker than at the surface.

"If they look in any direction except at the Earth, they'll see black," Sprague said. "It'll be just the sun sitting in a sea of blackness. The stars will be visible."

Cool article, although the fact the rocket parts are only valued at $3mil right now would make me concerned about riding in it.

Why not deal with a quantum mirage [wikipedia.org] or other quantum mechanical effects than to try to accelerate ourselves to fractions of the speed of light? Special relativity [wikipedia.org] tells us that the faster we go the massive we get, and not to mention the acceleration itself would be a huge stress to the occupants or payload, unless you want to take weeks to accelerate to high velocities.

Why bother with those complexities when you have the possibility to "travel" faster than the speed of light by using alternative methods?

Not quite, but to ease your concerns, lorentz dilations is not something that you can feel/see yourself about yourself. If you're traveling near to the speed of light, you will notice these effects on other objects which don't travel with you. Observers who don't travel with you will also notice these effects on you. But that wouldn't have any effect on you whatsoever.

Infact, there are objects in the universe that are moving away from us and we are moving away from them right now, with a speed near the speed of light. Do you feel anything?

and not to mention the acceleration itself would be a huge stress to the occupants or payload, unless you want to take weeks to accelerate to high velocities.

Why would we need to accelarate to such speeds? Why not warp space infront of us instead? Both the warp drive in startrek and wormholes, work with this idea. We wouldn't feel any accelaration because there wouldn't be any.

"Just because you can write an equation that describes something... doesn't mean that such an equation describes the real physics that are going on."As an experimentalist, it's refreshing to see someone making such a comment.

Well quite. A lot of people seem to forget (or were never taught most likely) that physics is just a model of the real world. Maths is an entirely man-made construction which is why we can achieve lofty things like proofs in maths and maths derived subjects (computing etc). Physics an

The problem I see is that while it may be possible to break the light barrier without breaking causality and using up infinite amounts of energy (and getting infinite mass), we ourselves may be keeping us from discovering it. He's right; this needs non-mainstream thinking. Creativity is severely dampened by this-is-impossible cries. Some might see a challenge in it to disprove this, but even then, the fact that it is considered impossible is cemented in the mind, thereby having an impact on creativity. Also, the fact that sometimes, the scientific community behaves like the church condemning heretics (just read the part with the difficulties getting a hearing about this exotic propulsion concepts), and that consequently, there are MANY crackpots in these "forbidden zones" which create an enormous noise, do not make things really easier. This might be too complicated for an innovation made by some weird genius in his basement, but the powers that could handle it might be too narrow-minded.

Waiting for the old guard to die is a popular belief, but I'm not convinced it's necessarily true.One thing that DOES have to happen is that enough anomalies have to build up in the old theory that people start looking for a new one. Then that new theory has to be rigorously formulated and tested. So yes, it does take time, but I'm not convinced that people dying is a necessary component.

Now, if you mean waiting for the general public to accept a new paradigm, then that might well take a generation, but t

Sure, a few blackboards for a few mathematicians and physicists might seem like a cheap way for NASA to look like it is doing something today but stabilizing the wormhole is going to be a bitch in 24th century dollars.

I think the most likely way we're going to get intelligence to other stars is to send AI computers, since they wouldn't mind the long wait. Even if creating AI is hard, if Moore's law holds, in 50 years we'll be able to simulate every neuron in a whole human brain on a computer in real time, so even if we don't understand intelligence, we'll be able to reproduce it. And if biological life is so important to you, send some frozen embrios (or info about their DNA on hard drives, and stock chemicals for building embrios from scratch) and artificial wombs with the computers too - let them build a colony, then defrost their kids.

Far-fetched? In my opinion, it's much more likely than being able to keep whole humans happy on a 100 lightyear trek. Yes, Moore's law might not hold up, but I predict we'll be able to upload brains before sending our fragile bodies intact to distant stars.

I find it somewhat disturbing...that they're planning to conquest other worlds instead of fixing the one they live in:-/

So do you think it is a good idea to keep all of our eggs in one basket? There's not much we can do as a species if something from the outside, like an asteroid, comes along and makes the planet unhabitable for humans. However, if we can get off this planet and colonize other worlds, humanity will survive regardless of what happens to the Earth.

I agree that we should be taking care of this planet as best as we can, but that should not stop us for pursuing the means to find and reach others.

The problem with the NASA hyperdrive program is not that it costs money, the problem is that people like you think it's going to be an alternative to cleaning up our act here at home.

You will not get off this planet, and neither will many generations to come. There won't be self-sustaining space colonies, and there won't be interstellar travel. We either live on this planet or we die on this planet. Deal with it.

The asteroid that struck the Yucatan 65,000,000 years ago didn't make the earth uninhabitable for all life; plenty of things- fish, turtles, alligators, snakes, birds, small mammals- managed to survive without any sort of technology whatsoever, let alone a space program.

What you'd need to survive an asteroid impact is basically the same kind of setup you'd need to survive a nuclear war and the resulting nuclear winter. A shelter to ride out the initial impact and any red-hot debris raining down from above

interactive civillian said: So do you think it is a good idea to keep all of our eggs in one basket? There's not much we can do as a species if something from the outside, like an asteroid, comes along and makes the planet unhabitable for humans. However, if we can get off this planet and colonize other worlds, humanity will survive regardless of what happens to the Earth.

I agree that we should be taking care of this planet as best as we can, but that should not stop us for pursuing the means to find and re

Actually the Sun won't go nova, it isn't the type of stars that do that. Instead it will have a prolonged death, allowing us plenty of time to see the warning signs (and they haven't started just yet) and either die out or skip to the closest star system.

Considering the limited information they have to work with, and the fact that scientists' theories change daily, I'd much rather not bet my life on that.

Here's the scoop...

Our knowledge of the universe is imperfect. Therefore, all our theories, hypothesis, and speculations about the universe, and its contents, past, present, and especially future, are necessarily imperfect. Thus, our all our hopes, concerns, and fears about the future that are based in our knowledge of the universe may or may not change as we come to a better knowledge of the universe.

In the fifties an thought of 'extinction level events' was dismissed by the general scientific community. It wasn't till the mid-late seventies that the whole ELE thing got much exposure. There currently seems to be a trend in astronomical, and planetary science circles to moderate the whole asteroidal doom jag, such as has been hyped by that the Discovery Channel, et al..

Consider the whole Popular Science/Mechanics 'Flying Cars' phenomena. ("Flying cars are always ten years in the future.") What I'm seeing on a lot of the 'educational channels' is the hype of science relatedspeculation. There's much more entertainment than education on most of these channels. While I at it I'd like to point out that Scientific American is rapidly headed in this direction. I've seen way to much politics, and other silliness in SA in the past twenty years than what I'm comfortable with.

Finally, remember Just because it is not logical, does not mean that it is not true.

If we stay stuck on Earth we are going to continue to overpopulate the planet until we consume ourselves to death. Population control is inevitable if we do not expand, and with population control comes the cheapening and commoditization of every human life.

China has population control, and people love babies and children like motherfuckers. When there's only one child to the family, these children are often overly doted upon, and too much family responsibility is places on them. Talking about the cheapness and commoditization of human life, what about families with 13 children? Supposedly, families will have extra, with the expectation that several will die.

The idea that expanding to other planets will ever act as a significant drain to the population of

Wrong. Overcrowded cities are dens of crime and black holes for opportunity. People drain out of big cities to small ones all the time, just ask us Californians. New lands are places of fresh opportunity and draw tons of immigrants. America is a prime example of that.

In the wild west, they had many kids in a family but they didn't treat kids like a few were just destined to die. Families with 13 children generally tried to take care of them all. Generally.

"Which will happen regardless of population control. You made it sound like that the population control would lower the value placed on human life."You disagree on that? Then ask the baby girls in China. That is, the ones that survived the gender selection purges going on there at the hands of their murderous parents.http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_ind ex.cfm?DR_ID=11199 [kaisernetwork.org]

Eugenics efforts also follow population control. Look up Margarent Sanger some time.

You disagree on that? Then ask the baby girls in China. That is, the ones that survived the gender selection purges going on there at the hands of their murderous parents.

I said human life. Sheeesh.

Kidding. It has had that affect not because it is a problem inherent in population control, but a problem in Chinese society that either wasn't brought to light until after the population control methods went into place, or were ignored. You might not have noticed, but American society is a wee bit different then

Anybody can construct an abstract future history that supports their current predjudices. His was optomistic, yours negative. Population control -- in and of itself -- is not a bad thing (just like, say, atomic energy).

The main issue, is that the idea of hundreds of millions of people leaving Earth in spaceships is so pie-in-the-sky, it's ridiculous. If there's space colonies, it's going to be a select few people - a drop in the bucket compared to the 6 billion+ on Earth. The de-settlement of Earth makes for excellent science fiction but that's it, it's not at all realistic.

"The main issue, is that the idea of hundreds of millions of people leaving Earth in spaceships is so pie-in-the-sky, it's ridiculous."

Kinda like we all knew the world was flat and that humans could never reach the moon, and all that jazz.

Colonizing another planet is no longer a technological question; it's now an engineering and determination question. It can happen, and if enough people backed by enough scientists decide it must, then it will.

I love your logic. People thought one unrelated thing could never happen. Therefore, everything impossible is going to happen.

Overpopulation of the Earth is a serious issue that is already being adressed, and will become a major world issue in the near future. Hundreds of millions of people leaving the Earth for life on Mars will not be happening in the near future. Obviously so many serious if perhaps impossible scientific and engineering advances would have to happen, any mass migration will be centu

Not really true about the cities. What's interesting about the last couple generations is that for the first time ever in the history of civilization, more people are choosing to live in cities (depending how you define the term) than to live in their hinterlands. Importantly, this is not due to population growth alone; farmers, rural homesteaders, and even suburbanites have been flocking to the cities because that's where the opportunities have been, since the industrial revolution tipped economies of scal

The 1970s called, they want their fear-mongering back.Get with the program; the majority of industrialized countries are now below the replacement fertility (almost all of them if you discount immigration) and there's no reason to believe the rest of the world won't join them as they become sufficiently wealthy. The official UN prediction of the population of 2050 has been coming down for a while now. Malthusian fears of a world of 25 billion people huddled together fighting over every scrap of food, while

Think of something you despise. Not just anything, an idea. Say, freedom of speech. (This is purely hypothetical, mind you.)Now, how do you resolve the ensuing conflict (whereby you believe, to the point of valuing it over your life, the non-freedom of speech) that happens when you meet a believer in freedom of speech (also to the point of valuing it over their life)?

Do you see the problem? It's a very gross oversimplification, but the fact of the matter is the problems of Earth aren't Earth's problems

Might be precisely because.Honestly, I don't think we really know how much we've fucked this planet up. I'm sure the real data is either kept locked away or drowned out by the noise of paid-for studies and nonsense pseudo-science.

But if we assume that either the planet is already beyond repair, or will be so before humanity as a whole learns better (and remember that for the 1 billion or so of us westerns who are slowly starting to get the idea, there's 5 billion africans and asians who also want to drive S

"that they're planning to conquest other worlds instead of fixing the one they live in:-/"

Which sounds like a real argument but isn't. While it would be nice to fix this world, the one and the other have nothing to do with each other. And I'd rather the high and wild physics guys would keep their attention fixed safely somewhere outside the solar system I'm living in thank you (just joking, but a grain of real concern nevertheless;-).

This planet is unfixable, nobody cares enough. A lot of people care, just not enough. And apart from some professional care takers' opinions and programs, the average solution put forward by your average shocked person are laughable. So if we're really messing it up too far, well, maybe we'll try and clean up a little. Let's hope we find viable alternatives for our more messy activities before we pass some critical treshold.

For the rest, just look at every humanitarian, ecological or political issue that in itself forms a sizeable threat to us or this planet. See if you like how we're "fixing" it. Not that some people aren't doing what they can and some organizations aren't great. Just, if you look at it all, you realize it isn't a bad idea to have some mad scientists look outside the solar system as well. They wouldn't be any good anyway in finding "solutions for this planet".

Most things are easily fixed anyway. It just takes investments (paid with money), sustained effort and lots of coordinated actions. Starting with good will between people with opposing viewpoints and different interests. Ahahahaha.

Simply put: take the combined budget of the US and Europe on military spending for ONE year, and you already have the money to fund half a century of all programs on acknowledged "big" problems like poverty, disease, education, clean water, most environmental issues etc etc etc. on a world scale, yes sir.

Problem is, even saying this is deemed political, liberal etc etc etc. So, while most problems are easily solved, we think it makes more sense to invest in a better club to hit our neighbor with. And well, for a talking monkey society that even makes a sort of horrible sense. After all, how can you trust that other alpha male and his friends NOT to kick your country in the bollocks and steal your mates? You can't, you just can't. Even Bush starts to make sense with his pre-emptive strike thing (the bloody uber-religious idiot fascist), which is fancy for "I saw you looking at my mate, so I'll kick you inna fork FIRST".

So, in short, without all the emotion: let's just try to do what we can on ALL fronts that aren't at least directly geared at killing us off as fast as possible, eh? Warp? Bloody good idea. Helping mankind? Sounds great.

Simply put: take the combined budget of the US and Europe on military spending for ONE year, and you already have the money to fund half a century of all programs on acknowledged "big" problems like poverty, disease, education, clean water, most environmental issues etc etc etc. on a world scale, yes sir.

Tried that. Didn't work.

Problem is, even saying this is deemed political, liberal etc etc etc. So, while most problems are easily solved, we think it makes more sense to invest in a better club to hit our

So, to summarize, while solutions are simple, implementing them is not. I'm sure it's not too hard to interpret my ramblings that way. And my main point was: it's no use to lament the fact that physicists are looking at warp drives to solve interesting puzzles instead of looking at for instance world hunger. Lots of people look at that, find solutions which are in itself simple enough but need too much good will and sustained effort (and not only from the haves, also the have nots, or the haves among those

"... we could see our grand children zipping to Mars and beyond for their honeymoon or school picnic...."

According to the article, it is predicted that we won't even be testing projectiles that reach 10% of the speed of the light (about 70 million mph) until next century, so if you want to see this in action, you had better invest in longevity research.

Everything you say is true. However, we have a lot to gain from gathering precious minerals and raw materials from other planetary bodies, moons, etc. The fact is we are running out of a lot of important resources, many of which could be easily obtained from elsewhere if we only had the means to reach "elsewhere".

Actually one scientific theory holds that it is extremely unlikely we're ever to meet any non-terran organisms that are comptabile with our own physiology. So while we might find inhabited planets, even ones that aren't too different from our own at a glance, our biology will be completely incompatible with theirs, so if we tried to eat each other, we'd die from starvation. Makes diseases transmitting extremely unlikely.

Well, we don't need hyperdrive for that. The Solar System has ample reasources, enough to sustain a far larger population than what we have with energy production being a non-issue for a period of a few billion years and enough power to make high speed, but still slower than light, intersteller travel cheap and affordable.

This is why people download eps off Bittorent / Usenet. Of course by inducing people to download and by uploading copyrighted material (in this case plotlines) the parent is guilty of both direct and contributory infringment.

As we speak the MPAA are deploying a crack team of ninja lawers armed with DMCA take down notices.

A isn't true, B might be (we don't know yet). Also, in order to expand "information space", you need to expand in physical space. And by killing off dreams about the last real frontier, you aren't doing any good. Just like the farmer boy who always dreams about moving out and becoming something greater, but who is forced by his parents to remain in the farm.

Your opinion is yours. but it sounds awfully like the 19th century opponents of trains.
"ooh the human body cannot sustain speeds in excess of 20 mph, it's just unnatural". Railway travel (general)
"I see what will be the effect of it; that it will set the whole world a-gadding. Twenty miles an hour, sir! - Why, you will not be able to keep an apprentice boy at his work! Every Saturday evening he must have a trip to Ohio to spend a Sunday with his sweetheart. Grave plodding citizens will be flying about like comets. All local attachments will be at an end. It will encourage flightiness of intellect. Veracious people will turn into the most immeasurable liars. All conceptions will be exaggerated by the magnificent notions of distance. -- Only a hundred miles off!--Tut, nonsense, I'll step across, madam, and bring your fan'...And then, sir, there will be barrels of port, cargoes of flour, chaldrons of coal, and even lead and whiskey, and such like sober things that have always been used to slow travelling -- whisking away like a sky rocket. It will upset all the gravity of the nation...Upon the whole, sir, it is a pestilential, topsy-turvy, harm-scarum whirligig. Give me the old, solemn, straight forward, regular Dutch Canal - three miles an hour for expresses, and two rod jog-trot journeys -- with a yoke of oxen for heavy loads. I go for beasts of burden. It is more formative and scriptural, and suits a moral and religious people better. -- None of your hop skip and jump whimsies for me."
Source: From the Western Sun of Vincennes, Indiana, July 24, 1830, as quoted by Seymour Dunbar in A History of Travel in America, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1915, Vol. III. p. 938.
http://www.foresight.org/News/negativeComments.htm l [foresight.org]
Just keep your horse then...

Other than that, the biggest shock I got out of the article was NASA in the same paragraph as "heritage technologies". Supporting the technologies of the past is NOT what we're paying taxes to support NASA for.
Particularly since we're not going to get space industrialization with launch costs of a few thousand dollars a pound, and that's about as good as we can do with rockets.